


talks like a hurricane

by atiredonnie



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Post-Canon, Shared Trauma, fuffy is a disease and i do not intend to ever get well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:28:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27824515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atiredonnie/pseuds/atiredonnie
Summary: The great inhalation of breath that prefaces a Buffy Oration Of Undiluted Fact is always a pleasant sound.Well, it used to feel preachy. Faith pretends not to know what’s changed.
Relationships: Faith Lehane/Buffy Summers
Comments: 4
Kudos: 31





	talks like a hurricane

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toyhdgehog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhdgehog/gifts).



> for marsh, the fuffy deity.

Faith talks like a woman on fire. 

Words come out fast and heavy and sharp with her, mouth curled up into a facsimile of a smile, drenched in impatience. It’s not their fault, really - Faith knows this. The baby slayers are all still learning what the power roosting in their bones means, how to wield it as an extension of themselves, like a knife, like a hand reaching out. But the coffee table is still cracked down the middle, a shallow canyon splitting open the fine wood, and Faith is no stranger to lacking control but. Seriously? _Seriously?_

Some limits need to be drawn in the sand and preserved for all time. 

“Who did this.” Faith spits, hands curled up into flushed fists at her sides, eyebrows jutting down, a straight arrow to the violent curve of her brow. There’s a muttering as the crowd of girls in front of her shuffle and kick their feet against the flea-bitten rug, appropriately sullen with guilt and faint resentment, simmering off of them like beads of sweat. In spite of this, no one speaks. No one even exhales as if they are _preparing_ to speak. Faith readies the artillery. 

“What’s going on here?” A voice drifts out from behind Faith, familiar and oh-so-welcome. A gentle hand comes up to touch Faith’s spine, and, in spite of herself, she sighs, melting into a puddle of stupidly enamored goo. A strand of Buffy’s hair brushes against Faith’s cheek, and she stifles an entirely inappropriate giggle. Faith coughs, gathering up the remnants of her composure. “Discipline,” she huffs, attempting to summon the comfort of rage that refuses to come. Buffy laughs sardonically, the not-quite-sour note of her voice thick with the tenor of an inside joke. “Accidents happen.” Faith bites her tongue and scowls, leather stretching around broad shoulders. “If it happens once, it’s an accident. Twice, and we have a situation.” Buffy hums. “Fair enough.” 

Buffy pushes past Faith, cornflower blue eyes scanning a properly-shamed crowd of - children. Girls, the oldest of which is barely seventeen. Something dissolves in the pit of Faith’s gut, washed away by acid and the floaty breathlessness that possesses her internal organs whenever Buffy’s around. It’s hard to be mad at people with such round faces, full moons and swollen eyes like lightning bugs. Buffy prepares a routine speech, and the corner of Faith’s mouth quirks up. The great inhalation of breath that prefaces a Buffy Oration Of Undiluted Fact is always a pleasant sound. 

Well, it used to feel preachy. Faith tries not to think too hard about what’s changed. 

“I know this is difficult for all of you,” Buffy begins, hands already moving through the air as if the constant motion of her limbs is second nature. “The urge to go all destroyo-girl is real. We all feel it. The urge to break something just because our body is capable of demolition isn’t something you’re alone in experiencing. It’s like… a shitty roommate. An invasion of your peace that essentially wants to eat you up and spit you out and leave their dirty clothes all over your floor. But being a slayer is about our ability to withstand those urges, and to channel them into our kindness. Our roommate, intentionally or otherwise, improves the world every day. That doesn’t mean we give them an inch. We let them free when we need them. Not when they need us.” 

Buffy falters, the metaphor clearly spiraling out of control. Faith smiles tenderly, gaze ripe with what she knows is blatant adoration, and silently curses her weakness. A slayer coughs, obviously uncomfortable. 

“What I’m trying to say,” Buffy says flatly, fingertips pressed against her brow, “is that whomever owns up to this won’t be punished, because I understand what you’re going through.” A soft noise begins to filter through the crowd of bodies, pressed together in a clump of sinewy muscle and doll eyes. “ _This_ time.” She amends. “I know it’s difficult, but Faith’s right, it is the second time you’ve broken this coffee table, and I don’t think either of us need the mental enema a third break will cause. Speak now, or forever hold your peace.” Buffy finishes awkwardly. 

A murmur ripples through the cluster of weathered skin. Finally, a girl steps forwards - Faith searches her brain for a name and comes up with Maggie, which she doesn’t know for certain is correct but is frustrated enough at the moment to not care. Maggie(?) is small, mousy, with only the strong slope of her jaw betraying the steel that hugs the steaming insides of every slayer. Her sneakers are a dull pink, and for some reason the sight of the flaking foam causes something dark and ugly to squirm in Faith’s abdomen. Her laces are perfectly neat in spite of the grime, tied into two pristine bows.

Faith only learned how to tie a knot two years ago. No one ever bothered to show her, whispering softly in her ears as they fussed with her shoes. 

Faith shakes off the melancholy like a wet dog, letting it all leak out, wishing the world only moved when she let it, hands primed over the axis, dark and still with stars. 

“I’m sorry,” Maggie is saying, but Faith isn’t listening. She wrenches her eyes up from her feet and to Buffy’s round face, framed by strands of sunrise-hair, orange and gold, a blurry canvas of smeared oil-paint. Her eyelashes catch every fleck of dust and Faith aches, body hollowing out, liver and lungs shoved out of the way to make more room for love and grief and something bigger than that, even. 

Buffy claps, sharp and loud. “You are going to help me clean this up, though.” Maggie nods glumly. Faith continues to drink Buffy in, and thinks, deliriously, of Roman statues tucked into the curves of the Pantheon, not the washed out versions that remain, but them in their original glory, painted red lips and half-baked clay. 

Faith needs to hit something, very, very hard. 

Later, after the sun sets and ashy violet bleeds over the incline of the horizon, Faith heads downstairs, clumps of dark brown hair pulled back into a ponytail almost furious in its severity. The basement, constantly occupied as it is by exceptionally pent-up, exceptionally strong young women, is lined with punching bag after punching bag, weathered red leather standing guard. In the dismal gray of almost-night, they look like delimbed corpses, swaying in a fitful wind. Faith is shaking. Why is she shaking? 

She lunges forwards, bare knuckles kissing crimson fabric, each hit bringing with it the burning of lactic acid. Faith imagines it dissolving throughout her, filling up every crevice and blank space, filtering through the skeletal maw of her ribcage, bubbling up and out of her nose and ears and eyes like an exorcism. Wine-colored bruises flower across her knuckles, spilled paint on bare skin, a hint of red peeking out from beneath the calluses. Faith hisses from between clenched teeth and draws her fist back again. 

A pale hand draws her bicep back like a bowstring, and Faith blinks, turning around to see - of course. Buffy, face scrunched up as if she’s been sucking on a lemon, fingers clenched around the curve of Faith’s arm. Faith attempts to resist the urge to lean forwards and wipe that grimace off her face. 

“You’re hurting yourself,” Buffy states before Faith can do something really stupid even by her standards. Faith sticks out her tongue briefly, and then feels bad about it when Buffy’s eyes narrow, which is stupid, because teasing Buffy is as easy and fun as drinking to excess, and yet somehow it doesn’t feel like teasing. It feels like Faith is being, maybe, a bit of a petulant bitch, and she’s not even sure why. 

“Sure am,” she drawls, instead of acting like a normal person. “Can’t take it out on anyone else, right? You said that, didn’t you B?” Buffy doesn’t deny it, only quirks her head like a mildly annoyed golden retriever. “Yeah, I did. I say a lot of things to those guys. Have you considered that maybe I just wanted to get them to stop piledriving the coffee table?” Faith smiles, distracted from her own self-flagellation at the sound of Buffy’s voice. “You’re a shit liar, B. It’s easier for you to sell that shit if you believe it.” Buffy sighs. 

A fist snaps out of the darkness. Faith flinches, but instead of connecting with her, Buffy’s white knuckles practically punch a hole in the bag Faith was harassing just a second ago. “Maybe you’re right. But I’m not the cleverest person in the world, if you haven’t noticed. I give awful advice all the time.” 

Faith moves forwards despite herself, palm fanning against Buffy’s shoulder, a mimicry of the soft touches Buffy delivers to her spine on the regular. Faith’s heart thumps in her chest cavity like graphite scorching the lines of a highway. “Yeah, well, I’m not the brightest bulb in the box either.” Buffy turns to Faith, lip trembling ever so slightly, hair coming undone and spilling across her shoulders, a lion’s mane of flax and fear. She moves slowly in the dark. 

Buffy’s arms wrap around her. Her fists gather up the fabric of Faith’s tank-top, carding through the fibers for leverage. “I did something really stupid, Faith.” Buffy murmurs into her shoulder, an release of something that feels to Faith like burning guilt. “And I remind myself every day how dumb it was, that I was trying purposefully to fall apart, but that doesn’t mean I can just stop,” she chokes out, throat thick with the sickness of words left unsaid for too long. “And every time I see one of you breaking open your bones for some idiotic greater purpose, or because you feel like you need to for penance, I want to scream and shake you because look what it’s done to me? Look at how I can’t get over the idea of it, even now?” 

Faith’s hands reach up to cup the back of Buffy’s head, jaw pliable with grief. She takes the girl’s hair under her wing and brushes the pads of her fingers against Buffy’s scalp, heart dragging behind, step by savage step. Her lips meet a scarred temple, and Faith, through closed eyes, imagines a door slamming shut. 

“We,” Buffy sniffs, messily wiping her nose on Faith’s shirt (and Faith can’t bring herself to care, why is that, why is that?) “Are entirely too breakable. I feel like a Matroyshka doll, but,” and she breathes in, then, as if admitting to something awful, “there’s nothing inside me. It’s air all the way down. If I’m not hurting myself, what am I doing? Why does it matter? The carrot and the stick, Faith, it’s all-” She babbles, and Faith stops her with a thumb smudged right up against Buffy’s moving mouth. Buffy blinks like a fish right out of water. Faith is very, very red. She ignores her flushed skin. Ignores everything but the newly-born wetness in Buffy’s eyes. 

“You know,” Faith says, smile wobbling, “all the baby slayers think we’re fucking on the downlow.” Buffy pouts, cheek stuck out comedically. “Well, I know that.” Faith pauses, then steamrolls ahead anyways. “Well, not all of them. Some of them think we _ought_ to be fucking on the downlow, but we aren't doing it yet. They smell like pity, which is rancid, by the way. They think it would be better for the both of us if we didn’t feel quite so alone.” 

Buffy looks up at Faith from lidded lashes. “This house is overflowing with loud teenagers. If there’s anything I’m not, right now, it’s lonely.” “I’ve already told you you’re a shit liar, B,” Faith mutters, and finishes the sentence by taking in Buffy’s mouth with her own. 

Buffy inhales her like a starving woman, thumbs curled around Faith’s jawline, eyes slammed shut as if when she opens them, Faith will filter through her fingers like sand. Faith’s head explodes, thousands of little champagne bubbles of joy bursting in her brain as she pulls Buffy even closer to her, nails biting into fabric and the slightest hints of skin. Gravity, or lightning, or hundreds of breathing fairy lights pull Buffy in, crushing her beneath the weight of love that sleeps side by side with mourning. 

They do not head upstairs. They sleep on the concrete floor and name the cracks in the ceiling, and Buffy cannot recall tears. Faith kicks off her shoes and remembers to demand nothing. Gladiolus rising, flowers of light and regret. 

Before the sky can light up again, Faith kisses Buffy’s forehead while she sleeps. There will be time to do this again, but the first act of intimacy lays the groundwork. The girls move the moon. They are practically mechanics, and they doze with the dirt of one. 

Every human body is haunted, Faith’s most especially. Buffy comes in a close and intimate second. They watch the sun rise. They forget to bleed.


End file.
